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Iron Supplementation Improves Appetite and Growth in Anemic Kenyan Primary School Children^1,2,3,

Program in International Nutrition, Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-6301; ^* Kenya Medical Research Centre, a Department of the Kenya Medical Research Institute, P.O. Box 20752, Nairobi, Kenya

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled iron supplementation trial was conducted in Kenya to examine the effect of iron supplements on appetite and growth in 87 primary school children. Sustained-release ferrous sulfate (150 mg) or placebo tablets were provided daily at school for 14 wk. Prior to tablet administration, baseline anthropometry, iron nutritional status (hemoglobin and serum ferritin), parasitic infections and clinical indicators of morbidity were measured. A baseline appetite test was conducted twice on each child by quantitatively measuring the ad libitum consumption of a midmorning snack. In addition, each child was asked for a subjective assessment of his or her appetite. Follow-up exams and appetite tests were identical to those at baseline. Findings indicated that provision of iron supplements resulted in improved growth and improved appetite (in terms of both energy intake of the snack and child report of appetite) as compared with children receiving the placebo. The increased energy intake from the snack was 10% of the daily estimated energy intake for children of this same age group living elsewhere in Kenya. Further research into the underlying physiological mechanisms may shed light on the relationship between iron nutritional status and appetite.

KEY WORDS: • iron supplementation • growth • appetite • children • anorexia

¹ Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, April 1991, Atlanta, GA and published as the following abstracts: Lawless, J. W., Latham, M. C., Stephenson, L. S., Pertet, A., Kinoti, S. N. & Adams, E. (1991) Iron supplementation and physical growth in Kenyan children. FASEB J. 5: A720 (abs.); and Latham, M. C., Lawless, J. W., Stephenson, L. S., Kinoti, S. N., Pertet, A. & Adams, E. (1991) Iron supplementation improves appetite in Kenyan children. FASEB J. 5: A720 (abs.).

² Supported in part by the Thrasher Research Fund; SmithKline Beecham, Ltd, and an NIH traineeship in Maternal and Child Nutrition provided to the first author.

³ The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

⁴ To whom correspondence should be addressed. Current address: Centre for the Sciences of Food and Nutrition, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Anthropology Unit, Headington, Oxford, OX3 OBP England.

⁵ Current address: Coordinator of Health Research, Commonwealth Regional Health Community Secretariat (CRHCS), P.O. Box 1009, Arusha, Tanzania.

Manuscript received 22 September 1993. Revision accepted 3 January 1994.

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